AmeriCorps Off to Slow Start : Service: Clinton program’s efforts to help the county’s poor suffer from lack of interest, organizational problems.

Sitting in his Third Street apartment, Julio Cesar-Perez lays out a bundle of small canvas squares decorated with colorful children’s drawings, which the AmeriCorps program was going to sew into a quilt to be sent to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The quilt, which remains unfinished for reasons no one can pinpoint, is emblematic of the Orange County branch of President Clinton’s national service program: a bundle of good intentions that never met their marks.

Less than one year after its first workers were sworn in, the county AmeriCorps has sponsored English classes that were canceled because of a lack of interest and because it made use of unaccredited teachers who were not AmeriCorps workers. Other programs, such as two health fairs, fell short of their goals and were plagued by disorganization, according to workers and administrators.

In addition, a federal report on the county AmeriCorps--which pays workers stipends and provides college grants for social service work--revealed that:

* After hours, community outreach workers were paid to do paperwork, a task that is supposed to be done by administrative staffers.

* Workers were not adequately supervised.

* Workers in Palmdale, who are overseen by the office in Orange County, do not have regular use of personal vehicles and have to depend on residents for rides.

* Workers spend too much time soliciting donations--up to one day a week--rather than participating in outreach programs.

“The issues of quality control are not insignificant,” report author Mae Chao said in a phone interview from Washington. “But none of them were of sufficient magnitude that we would say, this is a horrible program and we don’t want to continue funding it.”

Chao, who said she oversees about 60 AmeriCorps programs in 10 Western states, said many programs experienced growing pains during their first months. She said the issues in Orange County are no more or less serious than those that have arisen in most other programs.

“Overall, this is a good AmeriCorps program,” the report notes, and Chao added that it will probably receive funding for a second year. This year, the program received just over $359,000 in federal money.

President Clinton has called AmeriCorps one of his proudest achievements, and supporters say it is not simply a feel-good exercise but a program that brings concrete improvements to the lives of the nation’s poorest residents.

But as Congress debates the budget, AmeriCorps funding has come under scrutiny--mostly from Republicans--who argue that AmeriCorps has yet to prove itself. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) said he has recommended that the $825 million being requested by the President for next year’s AmeriCorps programs be cut by at least half.

“It seems to me, you ought to learn from your mistakes and assure a higher level of services,” Lewis said, when told of the first-year setbacks experienced by the county program. “Your experience in Orange County would indicate that’s not the case.”

Chao said that the county program did not break any AmeriCorps regulations, but that she hoped the issues brought out in her report would be resolved.

The administrator of the county program, Helen Brown, defended the program’s practices and said she has no intention of changing tack.

Regarding the use of unaccredited teachers, Brown said that as long as they produce results, they should be allowed. And where results have not been forthcoming and programs have been canceled, Brown maintains that AmeriCorps can try other programs.

“Just because it does not work one way, does not mean you give up the ideas” she said.

Other practices, such as the extraordinary amount of time workers spend on administration and fund-raising, are defensible because they teach valuable skills, Brown said. “I don’t think there is a job you do where you don’t have to make administrative reports.”

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The county AmeriCorps program is administered by the nonprofit Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp., based in Santa Ana. The program includes 24 workers, or what AmeriCorps refers to as members.

In Orange County, 14 members conduct programs in nine apartment complexes in Santa Ana, one in Fullerton and one in Costa Mesa. The other 10 members run programs in Palmdale, Santa Maria and Chula Vista, where the housing corporation is an owner of apartment buildings.

Of the $359,000 federal grant, just over $113,000 provides for a $4,725 educational grant that goes to each member. Another $155,000 provides members with what is called a living allowance, which averages about $6,000 a person.

About $45,000 pays for members’ health care and worker’s compensation insurance. Other funds go for expenses ranging from administration to AmeriCorps T-shirts for the members.

Like AmeriCorps programs throughout the country, Orange County’s program is expected to raise additional money--equal to 15% of the total federal grant--from other sources.

In Orange County, AmeriCorps had hoped to provide programs for close to 500 low-income people. That number was more than doubled for Palmdale.

Yet workers and area residents say that fewer than 25 people regularly attend any one AmeriCorps program in Palmdale, Costa Mesa, Fullerton or Santa Ana. Most programs range from five to 15 participants.

AmeriCorps workers attribute the lack of participation, in part, to the fact that they had to gain the trust of residents. Brown, however, expects residents to be more open to AmeriCorps programs in the future. They now know “what the program is about,” she said.

In Orange County and in the other programs in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego counties, AmeriCorps surveyed about 370 families in apartment complexes where the programs would be based. The surveys asked residents their vision of the future and which programs they would most like to see, and Brown listed the surveys as her proudest achievement.

In Fullerton, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana, Spanish-speaking residents often requested English classes.

But classes in two of those cities were quickly canceled because residents lost interest.

At an apartment complex on Third Street in Santa Ana, classes were held in a carport, and were not taught by an AmeriCorps worker but by the husband of one.

English classes that began in Fullerton in April are continuing. But again, the classes have been taught by the husband of an AmeriCorps worker. And the instructor, a sculptor by trade, is not licensed to teach English, said his wife, Melinda Gonzalez.

Chao, the federal auditor, said the use of unaccredited teachers raises issues of quality control. “You would kind of worry that he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she said.

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Where programs have failed, AmeriCorps has considered other programs such as Neighborhood Watch, or placing a computer in a laundry room of an apartment complex for children. But these are still in the planning stages.

AmeriCorps programs that got off the ground, such as a Santa Ana health fair, were plagued by disorganization, according to workers. On short notice and without any guidance, members say, they were told to organize a health fair that would vaccinate area children against rubella, polio and hepatitis B.

“We started [work on] that fair two months before it was scheduled,” Gonzalez said. “We should have started it six months before.”

Workers said they became frustrated and were unable to budget their time properly because of their inexperience and lack of guidance. Doctors and nurses willing to administer vaccinations were found only one week before the fair was held.

“The program was not that structured,” Gonzalez said. “It was just like, you go out and do it.”

Between the health fair in Santa Ana and another in Garden Grove, AmeriCorps had hoped to immunize up to 300 children. Instead, they reached 10.

Brown puts part of the blame on the cities, which she said suggested the vaccination programs.

“The cities indicated it was a need, and we did interviews [of children] in the jurisdiction,” Brown said, but she added that perhaps parents “don’t recognize the need for immunization.”

And in regard to requests by members for more direction, such as advice on how to organize a health fair, Brown said, “What, I’m supposed to do all that? How is that supposed to build their skills?”

AmeriCorps workers have also been involved in trash pickups, distributing Christmas food baskets and encouraging children to participate in Kids and Kops, an already existing program meant to promote community relations by having children spend a day with off-duty police officers at Knott’s Berry Farm.

“Although people may not see this as something their tax money should go for . . . when police are reminded that not all the people they deal with are scumbags, that’s a real stride,” Brown said.

Cesar-Perez, who awaits the other canvas squares so that his wife can sew them into a quilt, said AmeriCorps gave people the opportunity to work together to improve their community. But they failed, he said, when it came to finishing the quilt or assuring attendance at English classes at his apartment complex.

Yet that is no reason to cancel AmeriCorps programs, he said.

“If we don’t have an education, and the government doesn’t want to give us one,” he said, “how are we going to become part of the system?”